Re: [Nautilus-list] icon and metadata questions

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On 1/6/02 10:45 PM, "Frank Worsley" <fworsley shaw ca> wrote:

> A one line fix was needed to make .desktop file loading work. I have
> attached it as patch1.
> 
> The second patch fixes a memory leak in the renaming callback for
> nautilus_file.

These patches both look great! I assume that you need me to apply them, so
I'll mark your mail message to remind me to get them into the source tree
soon.

> I have also made other code changes that let you rename .desktop files
> by setting the "Name" value in the .desktop file. However, I have not
> attached the patch since multiple files have been modified and I
> couldn't figure out an easy way to run the diff command for more than
> one file. How would I do that?

I'd like to understand that feature better. If you do this, can you see the
"real" name of the desktop file? What happens if you try to rename the
desktop file inside Nautilus?

The easiest way to diff multiple files is to have two directories, one with
all the source "before", and one with all the source "after". Then you just
do "diff -u -r <dirbefore> <dirafter>".

> It would make sense for metadata support to eventually be built right
> into gnome-vfs. But, with NautilusMetafile being a CORBA object it is
> accessible by other applications anyway. Right?

Not entirely. The CORBA is there, but the idl is not installed into a public
place, so it's a bit inconvenient to use it. In addition, there's no long
term commitment to keeping this API stable, so using it might not be
advisable. Finally, if you use this API, you are relying on Nautilus already
being running. There's no provision for starting Nautilus in some sort of
"server mode".

Overall, I think that moving into gnome-vfs will have many advantages. But
your point is well taken that programs could use the CORBA directly even
now.   

> Since gnome-metadata is gone we wont be able to retrieve the icons for
> GMC links in Gnome 2. What would be the best way to handle these GMC
> links in that case?

I don't know. I think the basic idea was to ignore the problem and see if it
affects a lot of users.

> Maybe Nautilus should create a new .desktop file to replace old GMC
> links whenever it encounters them. The user can be informed of that
> change with a dialog box.

There are almost no gmc links outside of the ~/.gnome-desktop directory.
When Miguel added gmc link support to Nautilus 1.0, much of it was done in a
way that wouldn't work outside that directory (for speed, I believe).

So I think a one-time conversion program that runs separate from Nautilus
would be OK.

I'm likely to ignore this issue in the crush of just the minimum work
required to get ported to Gnome 2. Help implementing some solution would be
welcome.

> Thanks again for your help.

Thanks for the bug fixes!

    -- Darin